Love in the Time of Cholera.

If you call the creepy guy that follows me around the park on my lunch hour meeting people downtown, well then I suppose I'm meeting people downtown.

"Can I sing you a song?" Creepy Guy asked as he sat down beside me on the bench I was trying to eat my Starbucks sausage sandwich at in peace. He busted out with a harmonica, only my least favorite instrument of all time. I sighed deeply and heavily into the sausage sandwich, closing my eyes and dreaming of a beach with white sand and bloo water. I'm in a baby pink bikini on the shore, and the warm waves are lapping at my ankles. Architect is pulling apart the strings on my hip that tie the swimsuit bottom together.

"What should I call it?" Creepy Guy interjects. I opened my eyes and set the sausage sandwich in my lap.

"Call it Work Sucks," I said calmly.

"This is called Work Sucks!" he yelled, sending nearby pigeons into hysterics and causing every child on the monkey bars to pause and gape at us. I sat holding my sausage sandwich, patiently waiting for Work Sucks to conclude. My visions of the beach were replaced with those of Blues Traveler and John Popper engaging in an epic harmonica solo on the harmonica - my least favorite instrument of all time. I looked down at the sausage sandwich in dismay, having lost my appetite somehow.

Finally back home at the end of this day, I'm struggling to disengage my iPod and remove a week's worth of Sunkist cans from the car on my way into the house. A car horn sounds as I come up for air and shove the door shut with my side. I look over at the source of the horn, and it's Chris. He waves at me and nods as he drives past. Perplexed, I raise my hand to wave back and just sort of hold it there like I'm Gretchen at the end of Donnie Darko. A Sunkist can lost in the process rolls down the driveway and stops at the car's tire.

I lowered my hand and continued staring into the space where his car had been. Why are you waving at me, I thought angrily as I bent to retrieve the soda can. What the fuck. He had messaged me once a week for a month to say that he was sick or he was busy, but that we would watch the movie soon. "I swear" and "I promise." I had responded like a goofy girl in a goofy role, one which I'm not accustomed to playing. "Get well soon because I'm looking forward to it!"

Eventually the messages stopped altogether. No movie and no plans. I assumed he'd succumbed to Cholera until I received a message late on the eve of Halloween while I was deep in the throws of drunk-assery. He asked if I'd ended up doing anything. I suspended the mangling of some Foo Fighters song I was providing vocals for on Rock Band to reply to him that I was the only devil at a pirate party. "Fitting," he responded, "Swimming against the current."

I abandoned Rock Band entirely and made my drunken way to a loveseat in the corner which I sunk into and furrowed my brow at his words. The fact that he had retained any information about me whatsoever from our date so many light years ago encouraged me, and so I worked away at typing something back into my phone to him, which he in turn ignored.

Now I'm standing in my driveway mid-November, waving to his car. I guess it's good to know you haven't died of Dysentery, Chris.